Cuckoo, Cuckoo Though I risk the. Cuckoo's 42sittie,:of boring iteration,
I cannot for- bear from reporting one new Ubservation..on.this eccentric fowl. A farmer in the Lakes, who is a great lover and observer of birds, found a cuckoo's egg (as he finds one every year) in a meadow-pipit's, a tit-lark's, nest. He left. it there and came back to look at the nest about thirty hourt4ater. The nest contained only a young cuckoo, and no trace could be found either of the meadow pipit's eggs or young.. What are we to conclude? The farmer was himself persuaded that the young cuckoo was too young and feeble to eject either eggs or chicks in the normal brutal manner, and in any case these were not to be seen around the nest. This explana- tion, which seems to be the best, is that the mother cuckoo must lave revisited the nest—said to be the rarest of events—and made a meal of the foster-parent's eggs.
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